1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical connector, and more particularly, to an electrical connector mounted from a bottom surface of a printed circuit board so as to reduce the overall height exposed above a top surface of the same.
2. Description of Related Art
In the last decade, electrical connectors are widely used in electronic devices, such as notebooks. As the time goes by, the popularity of these devices has risen as the cost and the sizes of the devices have diminished, and low profile is naturally required for electrical connector to meet the reduced sizes of the equipments said above.
T.W. Pat. No. 510588 issued on Nov. 11, 2002 discloses a related board end connector. Said electrical connector includes a base portion, a number of contacts received in the base portion, a guiding block on each one of two opposite side faces of the base portion for guiding the connector to mate with a mating connector, a pair of retention portions outwardly extending from the back face of the base portion and a pair of board locks fixed to the retention portions for attaching the connector to the circuit board. As mentioned above, retention portions are extending a certain distance beyond the back face to provide a base for retaining corresponding board locks, the base portion and the retention portions are mounting above the circuit board in a certain height.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,331,122 B1 issued to Wu on Dec. 18, 2001 discloses another electrical connector. Said electrical connector also provides a guiding block on each one of two opposite side faces of the base portion and the rear ends of said guiding blocks are cut to leave a space for forming retention portions. With the retention portions engaged in the height of base portion, board mounting profile can be minimized accordingly. However, the depth of the base portion usually defined by interface standard, asking for lower mounting profile faces more difficulty.
Hence, an improved electrical connector having low board mounting profile is desired to improve the disadvantages of the related arts.